Houllier confirms Ireland wants to leave!

[Greg N'Ash]

FWIW, I'm not necessarily in agreement with Greg. I think MON's comments were unhelpful and seriously reduced our chances of keeping Milner (he might have left anyway), but that doesn't mean that he had an agenda. As MON were in a state of mind where he could leave the club a few weeks later without thinking too much about the concequences, it is not imconceivable that he made those comments too without thinking too much about the concequences.

i think thats a fair point and as likely to be as true as my "theories" or anyone elses... bottom line is we'll never know as we only have a few snippets from the board's side and MON isn't talking which considering he was never shy of using the press for his own ends is odd.

[Clark W Griswold]

My, I'm impressed by how 'in the know' everyone is on this thread.

[cdbearsfan]

Stephen Ireland is the biggest prick waste of talent since Nigel fucking Callaghan.

[brian green]

If you think of the club/player pendulum being at its extreme of favouring the clubs when players were on a £20 maximum wage and tied to a club for life the pendulum has now swung - post Bosman, to the other extreme when a player like Ireland can cop the nark to his employer after half a season and demand to leave.

Oddly, the first straws in the wind of a correction to the present excess player power began with Rooney who blatantly manipulated the media to get a massively increased contract.   I very much doubt that Rooney had the brain to pull such a stroke so the finger of suspicion must point at his agent.   Then Tevez is used in the same way to pull the same kind of stroke.   Does anybody in their right mind believe it is not about money?   My guess would be about £50K a week would cure the homesickness and £25K for each daughter would eliminate the parental pangs.

If Tevez continues to act the goat, Man City have to sue him and his agent for breach of contract.   Some club has to take legal action to stop the power of players and their agents.

I began thinking along these lines when Collymore was giving us such grief and things have got a lot worse since then.

Clubs have to act in unison to stamp out the piss taking of players like Ireland.   They have to be stood up to but so deeply ingrained in English football is the club mentality of beggar my neighbour that there will always be a club for the mercenary, unprincipled player to run to.   The same of course applies to players who commit serious crimes.   Because Joey Barton scored the winner for Newcastle in Pardew's first game in charge, all we heard the following day from the press and the electronic media were comments like "I know he has had his problems off the pitch but he is a brilliant football player".   It is the word "problems" which pisses me off as though he has run up some parking fines or not paid his TV licence.

It will be a good day for football when a club sets its lawyers on a want away player.

[villa1]

It will, but I can't see it happening... Unfortunately.

[hawkeye]

If you think of the club/player pendulum being at its extreme of favouring the clubs when players were on a £20 maximum wage and tied to a club for life the pendulum has now swung - post Bosman, to the other extreme when a player like Ireland can cop the nark to his employer after half a season and demand to leave.

Oddly, the first straws in the wind of a correction to the present excess player power began with Rooney who blatantly manipulated the media to get a massively increased contract.   I very much doubt that Rooney had the brain to pull such a stroke so the finger of suspicion must point at his agent.   Then Tevez is used in the same way to pull the same kind of stroke.   Does anybody in their right mind believe it is not about money?   My guess would be about £50K a week would cure the homesickness and £25K for each daughter would eliminate the parental pangs.

If Tevez continues to act the goat, Man City have to sue him and his agent for breach of contract.   Some club has to take legal action to stop the power of players and their agents.

I began thinking along these lines when Collymore was giving us such grief and things have got a lot worse since then.

Clubs have to act in unison to stamp out the piss taking of players like Ireland.   They have to be stood up to but so deeply ingrained in English football is the club mentality of beggar my neighbour that there will always be a club for the mercenary, unprincipled player to run to.   The same of course applies to players who commit serious crimes.   Because Joey Barton scored the winner for Newcastle in Pardew's first game in charge, all we heard the following day from the press and the electronic media were comments like "I know he has had his problems off the pitch but he is a brilliant football player".   It is the word "problems" which pisses me off as though he has run up some parking fines or not paid his TV licence.

It will be a good day for football when a club sets its lawyers on a want away player.

Great post, the problem is that Emplyment Law now in all its forms are so heavily biased towards the employee. The reason emplyers/clubs dont seek recourse through the courts is because they would lose. You can thank the EU for this, Bosman the Human Rights debacle. I dont read the Daily Mail or vote UKIP. The only thing that will change matters is an economic.

[pauliewalnuts]

Ireland has been a massive disappointment since coming here - to do with attitude, rather than talent, but a disappointment nonetheless.

I can't help thinking that the same people who are now moaning that we signed him without a manager would have been moaning if we'd signed nobody (and in some cases are the very same people who are suggesting that we didn't appoint a manager until after the window closed in order to save money).

Lose - lose.

I didn't want Ireland when we were first linked with him so I don't see how you can back up that claim. I just don't accept the assertion earlier in this thread that we had no choice in the matter. I feel that the board went through with it because they thought it would give them a bit os positive publicity at a time when it was in short supply (it still is). I can see why the did it even though it has turned out to have been a very poor decsion as it is clear he does not suit Houlliers's methods.

You didn't want that specific player, and you said it at the time - and it is looking like your main point of contention was right. But my point wasn't so much about Ireland, it was that the board were in a lose-lose situation.

If we hadn't bought anyone, people would be saying "you sat on your hands and kept your money tucked away until the window was clsoed" We did buy someone, and people say "you bought a player without having a manager in place"

[dave.woodhall]

God forbid that employees should have rights.

[pauliewalnuts]

And less than 5 minutes later (from the same IP address??)

I think it only fair to point out that no, the posts weren't from the same IP address.

And the suggestion that they might have been, and that that would have any significance, is pretty idiotic, unless you're trying to suggest that, actually, Pelty and General K are same person.

But nobody would suggest that.

Would they?

[hawkeye]

God forbid that employees should have rights.

I am not saying that employees should not have rights, or footballers for that matter. However some of the rights that they now enjoy are extremely unfair.

[dave.woodhall]

God forbid that employees should have rights.

I am not saying that employees should not have rights, or footballers for that matter. However some of the rights that they now enjoy are extremely unfair.

Good.

[Rudy Can't Fail]

And less than 5 minutes later (from the same IP address??)

I think it only fair to point out that no, the posts weren't from the same IP address.

And the suggestion that they might have been, and that that would have any significance, is pretty idiotic, unless you're trying to suggest that, actually, Pelty and General K are same person.

But nobody would suggest that.

Would they?

I don't know how anybody could think such a thing. The General has much better taste in music than Pelty.

[pelty]

And less than 5 minutes later (from the same IP address??)

I think it only fair to point out that no, the posts weren't from the same IP address.

And the suggestion that they might have been, and that that would have any significance, is pretty idiotic, unless you're trying to suggest that, actually, Pelty and General K are same person.

But nobody would suggest that.

Would they?

I don't know how anybody could think such a thing. The General has much better taste in music than Pelty.

Now that is a low blow, I have to say. "Fightin' words" as they said in the Old West! Ah, but I forgot, Mark, that you are a country music fan, so now I can see why you would say such a thing...

[Chris Smith]

There were a couple of people in the GM section who posted information they'd heard about Milner wanting to leave several weeks before MOn said anything. As I said yesterday, all that MON did was let the cat out of the bag. We can argue about whether being open and honest was the right things to do but the player was going to go as soon as the club received an offer they deemed acceptable so I don't think it made it either more or less likely.

[brian green]

Thank you Hawkeye for the support for my point.   I agree with you that any attempt in the present legal and social climate would fail.


Any club approaching a lawyer of quality to take on a malingering player would almost certainly advise his client that they would lose in court.   To prove deliberate recalcitrance would be almost impossible.   We all remember the string of niggling injuries sustained by Dwight Yorke once Ferguson had tapped him up.

At this point I must digress into a local issue with which I have personal experience to illustrate the principle I am trying to establish.   I apologize if my point is taken is taken as political.   It is not intended to be.

Where I live we have suffered several years of fighting a planning battle against several hundred travellers squatting on land they do not own and effectively building a squatters' village without any form of planning permission.   Our council has already spent over two million pounds in legal costs trying to correct the situation.   Matters came to a head when the chief executive of our district council announced unilaterally that nothing more should be done because the costs of fighting the legal battle were too high and the chances of victory too small.    This caused widespread revolt with the council tax payers not least because it presented an open door to anybody who could identify a cash strapped local authority and squat on land without fear of legal action.   We told our chief executive to continue the legal fight regardless of the cost to the council tax payers of South Cambridgeshire.

There come a time when wrongs have to be righted when the fight is the important thing not the victory.   I am sure if Manchester City took Tevez and Joorabchian(sp?) to court a jury would be buried with paper and video evidence that the defendant really did have a bad back or he really did try to score the penalty he put into row Z.   You don't need a very long memory to recall the Bruce Grobbellar case.

However if the want away mercenary player with an agent whispering in his ear about bigger pickings had to be told that he was about to need the services of a legal team who would charge him as much for a day in court as he gets in a week playing football I imagine we would see an immediate end to clubs being held to ransom by players.

At the moment all that a player like Tevez has to do is pose for some tabloid photos looking sad and hugging one of his children.   If they were made to scrap in court for the right to walk away from their employer things would be very different.

The problem as I wrote earlier is that the clubs play beggar my neighbour.   City fell about laughing when Rooney said he wanted away, United are doing the same over Tevez while what is really needed is concerted action by the clubs to curb the greed of players and their agents.   Don't hold your breath.